EIGHT REGIMES, WHAT EACH ONE CHECKS, AND WHAT CATCHES AGENCIES OUT.
THE REGIMES
- Eight regimes, one mechanic to track.Set the eight regimes side by side and the striking thing is how little the underlyingRead more →
- The eight regimes, side by side.Healthcare and social care · Education · Early yearsRead more →
- Three things that catch agencies out.The number is not the credential · Re-check is not expiryRead more →
Eight regimes, one mechanic to track.
Set the eight regimes side by side and the striking thing is how little the underlying mechanism varies. Almost every item on every list below is one of three things:
A dated certificate
Issued once, valid for a fixed period, then worthless. An offshore survival certificate at four years, a Driver CPC card at five.
A status reconfirmed on a cadence
Not a date that runs out but a position that has to be re-checked. The DBS Update Service works this way, and treating it as an expiry date gets it wrong.
A credential with a category
The number alone is not the qualification. A CSCS card has a type; a plant ticket is per machine. Two people can hold the same card and be cleared for different work.
Which means the hard part of compliance software is not knowing what a CSCS card is. It is having one mechanism that handles a renewal cycle, a re-check cadence and a category — and then filling it with the right content per sector. The regimes are content. The engine underneath them is the same.
Track every regime with one mechanic. Fourteen days free, no card.
Start free — 14 days →The eight regimes, side by side.
Healthcare and social care
The most written-about regime, and the one most agencies encounter first. DBS at the appropriate level, right to work, professional registration with the NMC or GMC, occupational health clearance, and mandatory training.
The trap: a registration number is recorded, not verified. Recording an NMC number and checking it against the live register are different activities, and most systems do only the first.
Education
Enhanced DBS, barred list and prohibition checks, safeguarding training, qualification evidence, and right to work.
The trap: safeguarding training is usually annual, so it behaves like a subscription rather than a one-off clearance.
Early years
Distinct from education proper, and heavier. Enhanced DBS, Paediatric First Aid, safeguarding training, and a childcare qualification.
The trap: Paediatric First Aid runs on its own cycle and is frequently the item that lapses unnoticed, because it is the only one that does not arrive with the DBS.
Construction and infrastructure
As compliance-heavy as healthcare, and less well served. CSCS card with its number, card type and expiry. CPCS or NPORS plant tickets, held per machine category. SMSTS or SSSTS for supervisors. Asbestos awareness, working at height, first aid at work, right to work.
The trap: the category problem in its purest form. "Holds a CPCS ticket" is not an answer to "can this person operate a 360 excavator".
Energy, oil and gas, offshore and marine
Arguably the strictest regime of the eight, and almost entirely unserved by mainstream recruitment software. BOSIET or FOET offshore survival on a four-year cycle. The OEUK medical — renamed from OGUK in 2022, though certificates in filing cabinets still say OGUK — on a two-year cycle. MIST, CA-EBS, ENG1 seafarer medical, STCW certificates.
The trap: helicopter transfer requires a recorded shoulder measurement. It is not a certificate, it has no expiry, and it will not fit any field designed for one — but without it somebody does not fly.
Driving and logistics
LGV and HGV licence categories, the Driver CPC qualification card on a five-year cycle, the tachograph card, ADR for dangerous goods, forklift certification, and DBS for particular contracts.
The trap: licence categories and the CPC card expire independently of each other and of the licence itself. Three clocks, one driver.
Financial and professional services
FCA registration, SMCR certification, fit-and-proper declarations, credit checks — and regulatory references, which carry a statutory six-year lookback and a prescribed shape.
The trap: that six-year reference regime is the one item across all eight sectors that a general-purpose references feature genuinely cannot absorb. It is a different thing wearing the same word.
Security-cleared work
BPSS, SC and DV clearance, each with a sponsor and an expiry, plus vendor certifications with their own renewal dates.
The trap: clearance is sponsored. It can lapse because a contract ended rather than because a date passed, which no expiry field will ever tell you.
Start with your sector’s starter set. Free for a fortnight.
Start free — 14 days →Three things that catch agencies out.
The number is not the credential
Most systems give you one reference-number field. A card type, a machine category or a clearance level has nowhere to live, so it ends up in a note nobody queries.
Re-check is not expiry
A status confirmed on a cadence and a certificate with an end date look alike in a database and behave differently in practice. Modelling one as the other produces confident, wrong answers.
Nobody notices in a busy week
Compliance tracking that depends on somebody remembering to look is accurate right up until the fortnight when it matters. The check has to raise the work itself.
Compliance dates that chase themselves. Fourteen days, no card.
Start free — 14 days →The regimes are British. The problem is not.
Recruitment is one of the few industries that exists in identical form in every country with an economy. Somebody has to find the people, verify they are who they claim to be, and put them in front of an employer who needs them. The verifying is where the local detail lives, and it is the only part of this page that changes when you cross a border.
United States
Form I‑9 and E‑Verify in place of right to work. State nursing and teaching licences in place of NMC registration and DBS, each with its own state and expiry. OSHA cards where CSCS would sit. TWIC for port work. The category problem is worse here, not better — a licence is per state, so “is a registered nurse” is not an answer to “can work this shift in Ohio”.
Australia and New Zealand
The White Card for construction, the Working with Children Check per state or territory, AHPRA registration for clinical staff, and a police check with its own currency period. The same three shapes as the UK: a dated certificate, a status re-confirmed on a cadence, and a credential that carries a category.
Ireland, Canada, the EU
Garda vetting, provincial college registration, national qualification recognition. Different issuers, different names, and the same three questions underneath: who holds it, what does it permit, and when does somebody have to look at it again.
The United States is the one exception above with a starter set already built in (the full US reference is here) — Form I‑9, ongoing work‑authorization tracking and, for driving and logistics desks, the federal Driver Qualification File, ready to apply from Settings. It carries no state layer and never names a single right‑to‑work document as mandatory, because that choice belongs to the employee by law, not to us. For every other country above, none of it is content we ship you. It is content you enter yourself, in a minute, without waiting on a release — because the document types in ATS Engine were never a fixed list. That is the whole reason the same product works in a country we have never sold into. Tell us what your clients ask for and we will help you build the starter set for it.
Set up the document types your desk uses. Fourteen days free, no card.
Start free — 14 days →Document types are yours, not ours.
ATS Engine ships starter sets for all eight UK regimes above, and a separate set built to US federal standards, so nobody begins from an empty screen in either country. But the document types themselves are your organisation's data: you create them, name them, mark them mandatory, set how many are required, and set how often each must be re-checked. Adding "Paediatric First Aid" — or a state-specific requirement no starter set could sensibly guess at — takes a minute and no involvement from us.
Every type carries its own clock.
A DBS runs out. A degree does not. A first aid certificate expires; an FCA register entry is a status you re-check rather than a date that lapses. So every document type holds its own expiry, its own re-check cadence, and whether that expiry may raise a task at all — because asking for a date on something that has none is how a register fills with invented ones.
Anything falling due inside thirty days becomes a task on somebody's list automatically. Each client can carry its own list of required documents, and any client without one follows your standard set. Consent to share a candidate's file is recorded, can be withdrawn, and is checked at the moment they are submitted.
£25 a month a seat, against one placement pulled because a certificate expired.
82p a day per recruiter — and expiries that raise their own tasks instead of waiting to be noticed.
Compliance is the one part of a desk where the cost of being wrong is nothing like the cost of being right. A DBS that lapsed three weeks ago costs you the placement, the client’s confidence, and the afternoon spent explaining it. Thirty days’ notice on every expiry, on somebody’s list automatically, costs less than a pound a day per recruiter. A year of one seat is less than the fee on a single placement — and this is the part of the job where a single placement is exactly what is at stake.
- Every type carries its own clockExpiry, re-check cadence, and whether that type may raise a task at all.
- A blocking check stops the bookingNot a warning after the fact. The assignment refuses while the document is outstanding.
- Fourteen days on your own sectorsLoad your document types and watch it run. No card needed.
Fourteen days free before you pay anything, and no card to start. Subscribe when it has earned it, and cancel in PayPal whenever you like.
This page is a working reference, not legal advice. Credential regimes change, awarding bodies rename their certificates, and the requirements for any given placement depend on the client, the role and the setting. Always check the current position with the issuing body or your own compliance adviser. If you spot something here that has moved on, tell us at sales@ats-engine.com and we will correct it.
Stop finding out on the Monday that a check expired on the Friday.
Fourteen days of the whole desk, no card. Your document types, your dates, your sectors.